


Vessel

by Curupia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Empathy, Gen, Introspection, POV Will Graham, Questioning self worth, Someone Help Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-08 00:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19095958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curupia/pseuds/Curupia
Summary: “How can you tell the difference?”It’s a simple enough question. One he’s heard more than enough times from the few who are brave or rude enough to ask it.The answer is the same, or some version of the same every time no matter how much he wishes it wasn’t.





	Vessel

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably going to turn into a whole introspective series... but we’ll just have to see where it goes. Leave me a comment if you’d be into reading more in this same vein.

“How can you tell the difference?”

It’s a simple enough question. One Will’s heard more than enough times from the few who are brave or rude enough to ask it.

The answer is the same, or some version of the same every time - _he can’t, what difference? There is none, that’s the whole point_ \- no matter how much he wishes it wasn’t.

He sometimes wishes he could parse it out - the _feelings_ , the _thoughts_ \- keep them in a separate, tidy box to pick and choose from at will.

Other times, he can’t bare the idea of being without them. The idea that without these “others” making themselves at home inside of him, he would be hollow, alone, _nothing_.

Sometimes he thinks he is nothing but an empty shell, waiting to be used and discarded again and again by any and every hapless creature that wanders by, regardless of fit or fashion. A vessel’s only reason to exist is to be filled and used - when empty it is _useless,_ _purposeless_ , nothing but a waste of space.

And what is he but a vessel?

What is he if not filled by the essence of another?

Whose thoughts and dreams and feelings does he experience when empty? Some days, he is convinced that he has none of his own. That all of those things that he thinks are fundamentally _his_ are just remnants, leftovers from previous inhabitants. He’s been like this for so long it’s hard to know for sure if he ever wasn’t. If he ever could pluck out a moment, a feeing, a thought from his own mind and truly lay claim to it as his own. He has no recollection of a time when there’s been silence in here, though there must have been at some point, hadn’t there?

He’s not sure.

He second guesses every decision - was he the one who made it? His body carries out the order, but his own self is not in command. If it even exists at all. Every time he gets close to _knowing_ a feeing is his own, something will shift and the new angle will put the feeling so far away from his capital “S” Self that he has to squint and contort to even _imagine_ how he’d thought it belonged there in the first place.

Sometimes he wonders if maybe that’s just normal. Maybe everyone has a difficult time picking apart the pieces that they’ve acquired throughout the day, the year, over the course of their lives. Maybe no one can tell the difference between influence and originality. Maybe we are all just a muddled quagmire of everything we’ve ever picked up from someone else.

Most times though, he knows that it’s not normal.

It goes beyond being influenced. Beyond following a trend or acquiring the mannerisms of a cooler older sibling or a respected authority. The influence he fees goes so deep it seeps into the spongy places inside his bones, melds into the marrow, infuses him with the very _essence_ of another, reworks his own structure and framework; coating, destroying, rebuilding. He is not a man made of his own cells. No. He is constantly acquiring and shedding skins like a snake. Every time another gets close, _a fraction of an inch too close_ , he absorbs and replaces something fundamental inside of himself that becomes his but no longer _him_. It is a part of himself, but foreign and strange. Like an organ transplant. He wonders if his organs had ever been his own to begin with, or if he had been built like this from the start. A Frankenstein’s monster construction of others pieces masquerading as his own - body, mind, soul. What would he be if he cut it all out? All of the foreign material, all of the _otherness_ inside him?

What would be left?

Not much.

No enough to survive, he knows.

“How can you tell the difference?” They ask, and he smiles, rueful. Not a real smile, just a pull of the cheek muscle, like a marionette on a string. He huffs a laugh through his nose, going for cocky and missing the mark by a mile. At best he hits socially awkward, and he supposes that will do. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he replies, dodging, and they laugh too. Like it’s a secret, a special gift he must keep all to himself.

 _Wouldn’t you like to know?_ Will sure as hell would.

Except for the days when he’d really, really rather not.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, feel free to give me some kudos and drop some comments, or check out my other works


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